Galaxy: 51-49 to Labor in Newland and Mitchell (SA)

Two new electorate-level polls suggest an intriguing election night looms in South Australia on Saturday.

The Advertiser has published two of Galaxy’s electorate-level automated phone polls from samples of about 550, and they have produced the very interesting findings that Labor holds 51-49 leads in its key marginal seats of Mitchell and Newland. The Liberals need six seats to form a majority government, and with respective margins of 2.5% and 2.6%, the seats in question are Labor’s fifth and sixth most marginal. We will evidently have to wait until tomorrow’s hard copy of the paper for full results, but it appears the poll will show that Kris Hanna, a former Labor member for the seat who held it as an independent in 2006 but was defeated by Labor’s Alan Sibbons in 2010, is at the very least competitive.

UPDATE: GhostWhoVotes relates that the poll in fact has Kris Hanna a fairly distant third on 19%, with Labor on 38%, the Liberals 36%, the Greens on 4% and Family First on 3%. For Newland, the results are 44% Labor, 42% Liberal, 8% Family First and 6% Greens. With both sets of primary votes, I would have thought Labor would have been further ahead than 51-49 on two-party preferred.

UPDATE 2: The Australian reports provisional results from a Newspoll survey to be completed today gives the Liberals further cause to fear they may not make it over the line:

But with results from the first 1000 voters polled showing a two-party-preferred vote of 53-47 per cent to the Liberals, Labor Premier Jay Weatherill may still have a chance of forming minority government if swings are contained in key marginal seats.

With two thirds of voters polled for an exclusive Newspoll to be published in The Weekend Australian, Labor’s primary vote has fallen from 34 per cent to 33 per cent over the past month while the Liberal Party’s primary vote has dipped slightly from 44 to 42 per cent.

If these two polls are reflected on the night, I’ve got the Liberals gaining:

Hartley
Bright
Ashford
Elder
Reynell
Mount Gambier (maybe)

That would make my count something in the order of: Liberal 23/24, ALP 20/21, Independent 2/3/4

Of course, we don’t know how big some of the swings will be in the safer ALP seats and I’m making a lot of assumptions that could go either way.

I can’t see the Liberals knocking off Piccolo in Light or Bignell in Mawson, partly because of the issues, partly because of strong local members, partly because of weak Liberal candidates. We’ve already seen a poll that showed Caica on 50/50 in Colton. I reckon he’ll hold it for the same reasons as Light and Mawson. That leaves Florey and Wright under 5% 2PP margins. I’m not in that area so I can’t really tell, but I’m guessing they’re close enough to the Holden plant to be safe enough for the ALP (that’s just a wild guess).

If this poll is representative I agree we could have a hung parliament or minority government. Yet in my contact with a few public servants lately they all speak as though the government is about to change. Weatherall has campaigned well, but the most optimistic views I hear from people on the Labor side is that it might be close.

Brock: Labor
Such: Liberal
Peglar: Leaning Liberal
Hanna: Unpredictable (I wouldn’t want to rely on his support to win government because he’s the sort of person who’d strap on the vest full of dynamite over minor issues)

Yet in my contact with a few public servants lately they all speak as though the government is about to change.

Of course the public service must work on the assumption that the government is going to change else they won’t have anything ready if the government does change and thus they will have to spend the few months after the election working 60 hour weeks.

Okay, I was wrong. I don’t know where I got my info from. According to this article (albeit a 2-month-old one), the support of people like Such is anything but assured. Although indies do like to play the “nothing’s certain!” card, so they can get the best deal, the article suggests a bit of annoyance over the Liberals going hard against them. Still, come crunch time, they may well remember that no independent is invincible at the end of the day and supporting the wrong side can be deadly.

But, as I said, it might be in Labor’s best interest to not push too hard for a minority government. It’d probably be better in the long-term to bow out and be within a whisper of winning next time (not to mention no longer being a drag on the federal vote) than to claw on for another four years and be absolutely wiped out in a NSW-style election next time (as well as lose Adelaide and Wakefield at the next federal election.)

Well a win will be a win for the Liberals but, frankly, if it ends up as a hung parliament then the Liberals need to hang their heads in shame a bit over the fact that a month ago there were talks of a wipe-out and they ended up barely scraping over.

Sorry Spur, but I can’t see how the Libs are going to knock off Reynell on this poll.

The ALP have (internally at least) given up on Hartley and Bright, and they are not positive in Ashford or Elder, but if they retain everything else, a hung Parliament it is.

Of the Independents, I think the Fairfax poll in the town of Port Pirie showing Brock’s vote rising has fur on it. I am not doubting that he will win, but the poll’s methodology is dodgier than a dodgy car from dodgy brothers. Still, it appears the Libs won’t gain that seat – this time anyway. Pegler may get knocked off by the Libs in Mt Gambier but he would have backed them into Government anyway. Bob Such will win Fisher and of the others, Hanna has no hope according the poll and Labor are telling people down in Lee that they are safe.

One thing that probably needs to be taken into account with the Independents is that with Bob Such it is almost certainly his last term and it may well be for Geoff Brock, and if Pegler survives it may well be his last term too – they will all be in their 70s – so they may not make a decision on a hung Parliament on political survival at the next election at all.

Hanna won’t be elected on those figures, but it is highly likely that 80-90% of his votes will go to Labor via preferences.

Chalk up Mitchell for Labor.

If Labor can’t hold Florey, with as strong and popular local candidate as Frances Bedford, then they might as well pack up and go home. Which is why, on the figures from Mitchell, Newland (which is next door) and the previous on on Colton, I can’t see it happening.

To be honest – and yes, I did predict this a couple of weeks ago – I wouldn’t be surprised if the swings are in all the wrong places again; safe Liberal seats and safe Labor seats, but the marginals mostly stick.

If so, it is probably a worst-case scenario for Labor; trying to govern with a hung-parliament. Better that they fall this election but with a strong team and regroup to fight the next.

I think Wright might be more in play even with an incumbent but I see your logic with Reynell. The ALP in Torrens have a problem in that a very hard working local MP has gone, but the demographics have changed against them. And the Libs have worked the seat harder than others in that range – it could be a sleeper, or they might retain it by a sliver.

Mitchell staying with Labor was always a strong possibility in my view. Hanna was never going to poll as well as he has previously, never a real chance.
Newland I had down as a strong possibility to fall so if Labor keep it then it would be a surprise to me.
Bob Such as been speaker before and if it is a hung parliament would be the obvious choice to do so again.

Indeed. This kind of poll tends to minimise any change in the trend (similar to the bias-to-stability that William Bowe has described in Essential’s poll series), so it’s quite possible the Liberal 2PP right now is somewhere between 52 and 52.5…

…which means the identity of the Premier of South Australia after 6pm Saturday is still an open question.

AS, A 1% swing to the Liberals as you are suggesting, and this poll says more than that, but a 1% swing to the Liberals means nothing is certain.
I still expect Liberals to govern after the election, but the chances they will need a bit of help is looking more likely.

The ALP’s ads have focused on their record of projects rather than the delivery of them and said the Liberals opposed it all. Now, while those projects were being delivered, of course voters were pissed off because there were all sorts of issues with timetables, cost blowouts etc etc etc. The thing now is many of these projects have been completed. You can see the Adelaide Oval for yourself. The new Adelaide Hospital is very visible to anyone going down North Terrace. If you live on the Noarlunga line, you can catch a new train from Seaford to Adelaide. The bridges in the southern areas that were constructed over a ten month period and were causing major traffic delays (in many key marginals seats down south) are now completed. So what I’m guessing is happening is the focus is turning from the delivery to the results. So when the ALP were running ads about all this stuff they were actually sort of getting through to people.

You combine all that with the Holden plant closing, fears about Job Security and a small target opposition and you’ve got something to work with.

The Liberals strategy has been to focus on Marshall’s positivity yet what’s happened is during the campaign, he’s seemed a bit shifty on really trivial things.

Also, Abbott visiting yesterday and acting like a child over the announcement might not have been such a great idea from the Liberals. Their strategy has been to emphasise cooperation between the Feds and the state govt. That might not be working as well as they planned as it comes with all of Abbott’s baggage.

Labor can’t win this election. Too much baggage from the Rann-Foley years. But Jay Weatherill has campaigned doggedly and looks like saving a lot of the furniture.

The Libs on the other hand do not really deserve to win. They’ve hidden their policy costs and wrapped Steven Marshall in cotton wool. The media has been deficient in its scrutiny. PM Abbott’s snubbing of Weatherill and hisblatant partisanship has been nothing short of insulting and disgraceful.

On ABC Radio a little while ago Tony Wright was still rabbiting on about the Don Farrell faceless man incident. IMHO this has had zilch influence on the election.

The real faceless man who is never exposed as such is a creepy fellow called Christopher Pyne.

I agree with Psephos which is always a concern but there is a weakness in having the leader who just failed to win a majority do the negotiation – should be more independent members of caucus who can make the call slightly more objectively in the party’s best interest. If only there were any left who would act in the party’s interest. Sadly there aren’t.

About this blog

William Bowe is a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Australia’s Discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has been running the electoral studies blog The Poll Bludger since January 2004, independently until September 2008 and thereafter with Crikey.